Archive for the ‘Animal Shelter’ Category

A neighbourhood family had a redundant piece of land, and offered that to “Het Da Vinci College” , a school for animal care and gardening, with pupils who require additional support. They didn’t know where this would end, because there was a plot, lots of enthusiasm, involvement, from the school, neighbourhood and city council, but neither the skills, nor the money to realise the project. That’s where RO&AD architects stepped in. With help of the Province of Noord-Brabant, Visavis Landscape designers, who gave a small budget, they designed a plan which made it possible to be made by the teachers, the pupils, and the neighbourhood themselves. It is a 6 meters wide and 100 meters long timber structure, with relatively easy to make trusses, which are held together by nail plates. All rooms, like the classroom, animal room, greenhouses etc are placed in a row, without any room and money devouring things like halls or hallways. When Rini, a teacher at the school, saw this, he became so enthusiastic, that he offered to make the building himself. And that is what happened. He postponed his retirement for 2 years, and together with neighbours, students and lots of other people he started to work. Under the guidance of a contractor and the architects, he built the school, and the garden in 1 ½ year’s time. And it works! Neighbours are taking down their fences to get access to the school garden. They take care of the plants and the animals during the holidays, and the students finally have a place where they can be proud of to work on.

Panda House responds to the species’ main threats to extinction – habitat loss and fragmentation – by providing a safe and contiguous environment that’s also conducive for reproduction. We proposed a circular shape for the design – befitting the site perfectly between existing buildings and enabling the literal yin-yang symbol to create separate enclosures for male and female pandas. The architectural parts of the earth are then lifted from either side of the “yin” and “yang” to form space for stables belowground, simultaneously creating an incline to naturally face the pandas toward the audience.

The Staten Island Animal Care Center is designed to encourage the adoption of animals while creating a humane and controlled environment during their stay. In addition, the program requires unique circulation patterns to provide for the routing and isolation of well, sick, and un-examined animals as they are processed and tended to. The building is sheathed in a highly insulating, translucent polycarbonate envelope that provides four times the insulating value of glass, maximizes the benefits of natural light, and allows for a very light weight structure.